Sanitation district goes green with biosolids project
By Paul Sisolak 08/06/2009
An environmentally friendly waste disposal project in Ventura County, seen as the largest of its kind in the country, should be on track and running within a few months, according to county sanitation officials.
The Ventura Regional Sanitation District’s (VRSD) brand new biosolids facility, which has the ability to break down and turn wastes into nonpolluting forms, is located at the Toland Landfill between Santa Paula and Fillmore. It’s hoped this will drastically free up landfill space that would otherwise be slowly encroached by trash buildup.
The $19 million prototype facility, funded by the district, is composed of several trash hoppers, burners and generators that are designed to take wastewater and sewer plant solids, known as biosolids — a mostly aqueous, sludgy byproduct — and treat them for use as a fertilizer cover in the landfill so that existing trash can be better decomposed. Biosolids are formulated through wastewater treatment plants, then shipped into the landfill.
According to Gary Lawler, district general manager, one of the environmental benefits of the biosolids project is reduced truck traffic on highways and roads.
“Historically, almost everyone in Southern California has been hauling (biosolids) up to Kern County,” Lawler said.
According to Jim Monahan, a Ventura City Council member who also sits on the VRSD Board of Directors, this practice has been in place for more than 50 years.
By implementing the program, says Monahan, more than one million truck trips a year, hauling biosolids from Ventura County and beyond to Kern, can be avoided and later eliminated outright, cutting down on air pollution and greenhouse gases from vehicle emissions, and fuel costs.
Under the new program, says Frank Kiesler, an engineer for the district, nine to 10 trucks per day haul biosolids to the Toland site, where more than 170 tons are treated to extract bacteria and waste. About eight tons of biosolids at a time are processed in three hours.
“It’s a sterilization process,” Kiesler said. “The typical method is to burn [the methane gas byproduct]. That’ll stop” with the new project, he added.
Part of the treatment process involves drying the sludgy material into hardened pieces that are used as cover for the hilltop landfill, in lieu of using dirt. It takes 370 cubic yards of biosolids, according to Kiesler, to cover the 1,400 tons of trash brought daily to the landfill. The trash generates natural, methane gases when broken down.
Likewise, said Kiesler, gases released into the atmosphere from the drying and treatment of the biosolids are carbon-based and safer. The facility’s nine biosolid turbines, he noted, operate on about 320 kilowatts of power.
Data from the sanitary district indicates that as much as 15,000 tons of fossil-fueled, conventionally powered energy can be offset by the new facility. It’s compliant with regulations from the county air pollution control district, Kiesler says.
Monahan says a substantial savings — upward of $1 million a year — can be had from the greener, more efficient process.
“Instead of buying the gas to operate,” he said, “we use methane.”
Monahan said the VRSD fashioned its biosolids project after a similarly established program in Fenton, Texas. Earlier this year, when the Ventura facility began testing its own program, the County Board of Supervisors awarded the sanitation district a Climate Change Action Award for its efforts.
Another related project in the planning/permitting stages is a trash incineration program. Coordinated with the biosolids program, it’s intended to cut down on landfill space, meaning fewer biosolids will be needed to cover less trash.
“It’ll remove the need for a landfill, eventually,” Monahan says.
Monahan notes that Richard Baldwin, a sanitation district consultant who once headed the county air pollution control district, is spearheading the permit process, which could see additional facilities built at the landfill, once approved by county supervisors. As with the biosolids program, Ventura looked elsewhere, this time toward Temecula, which has a trash burning program in place.
“The idea is that the material, the residue, could be blended in sand or concrete,” he said.
It is hoped the incineration project will be environmentally friendly, as well, because the same natural, methane gas from decomposed trash is the only kind released into the air when burned, according to Monahan.
Monahan said he intends to bring the proposal before his colleagues on the Ventura City Council in the near future.
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